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Attachment Parenting
aerotigergirl
member
Extended BFer's: A question
aerotigergirl
member
My DS is currently 8.5months old. He's always been really great at nursing, but lately it seems like he's losing interest. He is taking solids now in addition to breastmilk, and he's gotten very interested in solids lately. Especially in feeding himself finger foods (veggies, pasta, cheerios, you name it). He gets two Stage 2 purees with rice cereal per day (though he's started fighting those and seems to want finger foods instead).
He is in childcare 3 days/week, and I was sending 3 (7oz) bottles of BM for him, but now he often only takes 4-6oz from each bottle (it's frustrating to see so much BM go down the drain!).
He also does not STTN. He wakes 3 times/night, and lately his nighttime nursing sessions are longer than the daytime ones. This wasn't always the case. He used to really only comfort nurse in the nighttime (he'd nurse for 2-3 minutes and then fall back to sleep). Now, though, it seems like he needs the calories, since he's nursing for 10-12 minutes at every night waking before falling back to sleep.
So, my questions are thus:
1.) Does it sound like DS is trying to wean? Is this why he seems more interested in solids than he is in BM?
2.) Should I try to NOT nurse him during the nighttime? Would he be more likely to take more BM during the day and sleep longer stretches at night if we took that approach?
3.) What, if anything, can I do to help ensure that our nursing relationship doesn't end early?
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Re: Extended BFer's: A question
1) Not in the sense that he's quitting nursing. He's just getting far enough with solids that a significant (but still smaller than milk) amount of calories is coming from solids. Solids are novel and entertaining.
2) It might. Or it might not. It's normal to make up missing liquid calories overnight. If I was you, I'd dream feed him before you go to bed (I find that I don't mind that feed, because I'm up anyway). Then you could work to decreasing his other overnight feeds if you want (or need) to. 7 oz bottles are abnormally large for breastmilk, though, so it's not really troubling that they're smaller now.
3) Keep nursing. Offer frequently when you're together. Try to nurse before meals (30-60 min before). Allow night nursing.
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Why is the rest of the bottle being dumped? Does your daycare know that breast milk can be re-refrigerated and offered again? It just has to be used within 24 hours if it's thawed from frozen.
Could you encourage the daycare provider to finish each bottle before starting the next? That way maybe you'll be able to get a better idea of how much milk to send to daycare for him. If he's drinking 4-6 oz per bottle that's 12-18 oz per day, so you might be able to send 2 bottles totalling 14 oz instead if they agree not to chuck your perfectly ok milk.
1.) Does it sound like DS is trying to wean? Is this why he seems more interested in solids than he is in BM? I don't think he is trying to wean, ds milk intake went down when he started eating more. Also, he did some reverse cycling - meaning when they don't see you all day they would rather nurse then take the bottle therefore all the night feedings.
2.) Should I try to NOT nurse him during the nighttime? Would he be more likely to take more BM during the day and sleep longer stretches at night if we took that approach? This is more of a personal call. Is it effecting how you feel? Or affecting your LOs sleeping habbits during the day. At 8.5 months babies shouldn't "need" to eat at night if everything esle is typcial. What you can try (what I did) is have DH go in a try to settle LO. I would feed 1X and then have DH go in the rest of the night.
3.) What, if anything, can I do to help ensure that our nursing relationship doesn't end early? Keep nursing - nurse before meals - keep night nursing as long as it is not too mcuh for you. It was for me so I had to cut back to once a night. I was able to nurse until 22 months.
Their policy is that once a bottle (whether it contains breastmilk or formula) is started, it can't go back into the fridge since there is a possibility that it would introduce germs to the other bottles in the fridge. I've tried a number of different things (providing 3 smaller bottles plus one "just in case" bottle) in order to avoid sending so much down the drain, but my son just seems really inconsistent. Some days he doesn't want all that I send, and there have been other days when they've called me at work saying he's run out.
The night nursing is bearable right now, because it still doesn't usually take him very long to nurse and then fall back to sleep. But there have been times (even fairly recently) when he's decided it's time to play at 2AM, and on those nights I wonder about my sanity. We don't give him bottles at home, so anytime he wakes in the night, the wake-up call is for me rather than DH.
As far as his daytime sleep goes, it's really all over the place. Sometimes he naps, sometimes he doesn't. On the days when I'm at home with him, I pay close attention to his cues, and I can usually tell when he's tired and get him down for 30-40 minutes (that's his long nap). He might take another nap that day, for maybe 20-30 minutes. But then, there are other times when he's napped for 2 hours. He's just very inconsistent.
I've struggled with this nap thing for a while. For a while I worried that his inconsistent routine during the day was because he wasn't getting enough sleep, so we considered sleep training. (Blame it on all the sleep-associated "advice" you get on the bump boards, I guess.)
But, after reading 6 books on the matter (Ferber, Sears, Mindell, Pantley, Gethin and now the Sleep Lady), we've pretty much decided that he is fine, even if he is inconsistent. He's happy, not cranky, and he's meeting his milestones without any trouble, so I assume he's developing perfectly fine. He doesn't have any problem going to sleep when it's bedtime. We have developed a pretty good, consistent routine there.
So, I guess for the time being I should just not worry about him weaning early, as long as I can keep nursing him throughout the night.
Can you send smaller bottles and some frozen BM to daycare? That way, if he wants more than what's in the bottles it's there for him, and if not it can just stay frozen until he needs it. It's a shame so much is going to waste.
Our DCP let us keep frozen milk in the freezer, they just asked that we take it home over the weekend and bring it back the next Monday (they didn't want to be liable if they had a power outage over the weekend and have it affect the milk).